Part 22 (1/2)
”That does not help me much,” said Denis. ”But I'll get your wine, all the same.”
He went.
”A nice young fellow,” observed the priest. ”This little accident of yours,” he continued, ”does not reflect itself on your face. You always look like a baby, Keith. What is your secret? I believe you have concluded a pact with the devil for your soul.”
”To tell you the truth, Don Francesco, he never made me an offer for it.”
”Sensible devil! He knows he will get it sooner or later for nothing.”
They conversed awhile till Denis returned, bearing sundry bottles and gla.s.ses on a tray. The priest smiled at the sight. Light-hearted allusions to Ganymede rose to his lips, but were suppressed. He swallowed down the rising inclination to be cla.s.sical at the expense of good taste, and engulfed, on the top of it, as a kind of paperweight, a vast tumblerful of red Nepenthe wine. The draught instead of cheering seemed to make him suddenly despondent. He wiped his lips and remarked, in a grave and almost conscience-stricken manner:
”I have some unpleasant news for you, gentlemen. The fountain of Saint Elias has ceased to flow. We heard it this morning from a sailor, an unusually trustworthy person--a man, I mean, who can be relied upon to tell the truth when there is nothing to be gained by concealing or distorting it. The thing must have happened last night. Yes, it has dried up altogether. What is to be done?”
”You don't say so,” remarked Keith. ”This is really interesting! I thought something was going to happen. I suppose your people are rather alarmed?”
Denis interrupted:
”I don't understand what you are talking about. Why should not a fountain dry up if it wants to? And what does it matter to anybody?”
”What does it matter?” echoed the priest. ”This is no ordinary fountain, I am sorry to say. Have you never heard of Beelzebub?”
CHAPTER XVI
Now, with regard to fountains, it is to be noted that Nepenthe, an islet of volcanic stone rising out of the blue Mediterranean, has never--for all its natural attractions--been renowned for cool springs and bubbling streamlets. There is, to be sure, a charming couplet in some old humanist about LYMPHA NEPENTHI; but modern scholars are disposed to think either that the text is corrupt and that the writer was picturing an imaginary NYMPHA--some laughing sea-lady--or else that he merely indulged in one of those poetic flights which are a feature of the literature of his period. For whatever the cause may be--whether internal fires have scorched up the natural humours of the soil, or whether the waters of Nepenthe are of such peculiar heaviness that, instead of flowing upwards in the shape of fountains, they tumble downwards into caverns below the sea--the fact remains: Nepenthe is a waterless land. And this may well be the reason, as several thoughtful observers have already pointed out, why its wines are so abundant in quant.i.ty, so cheap in price, and of such super-excellent flavour. For it is a fact conformable to that law of compensation which regulates all earthly affairs, a fact borne out by the universal experience of mankind, that G.o.d, when He takes away with one hand, gives with the other. Lack of water, on the face of things, might be deemed a considerable hards.h.i.+p. There are tracts in Africa where people have been known to barter wives and children for a cupful of the liquid element. Of the inhabitants of Nepenthe it must be said to their credit that they endure their lot with equanimity, and even cheerfulness.
Their wine costs nothing. Why grumble at the inscrutable ways of Providence? Why be thirsty, why be sober, when you can get as drunk as a lord for the asking?
For the rest, there are indications to show that such was not the original condition of affairs on the island. On the contrary, certain legends still current among the country-folk lead one to suspect that fountains once flowed on this arid rock. And more than legends.
Monsignor Perrelli, in his ANTIQUITIES OF NEPENTHE, has gone into the subject with his usual thoroughness. The reader who takes the trouble to consult that work will find, in the twenty-sixth chapter of the third section dealing with the Natural Productions and Water-Supply of the island, an enumeration of no less than twelve fountains still flowing during the author's lifetime. Some of them issued high up, in rocky clefts; others at the middle heights, among vineyards and orchards; the majority at, or near, the seash.o.r.e. All of these springs, he tells us, had the following features in common: they were more or less hot, unpleasant to the taste, of foetid odour and therefore unfit for culinary or other common uses. ”But let it not be supposed,” he hastens to add, ”that they were worthless, inasmuch as there is no such thing as a worthless gift of Providence. Whoever argues on such fallacious lines,” he says, ”will stand convicted both of folly and of irreverence, seeing that it is the business of mankind, when confronted by a phenomenon which seems to mock their intelligence, humbly to ponder the evidence--to investigate causes and ascertain results.” In the present case the utility of the waters, if not for cooking or drinking then for other specific purposes, had been put to the proof time out of mind, in an empirical fas.h.i.+on; though it was not till the reign of the Good Duke Alfred that a series of cla.s.sical experiments placed our knowledge of their medicinal properties on a sound scientific footing.
In a dissertation attached to this twenty-sixth chapter--a dissertation larded with ill.u.s.trative extracts from Galen Celsus, Avicenna, Antonius Musa, Oribasius Salvus and about fifty others of the ancients who professed the healing art--Monsignor Perrelli condenses for his readers the results of these cla.s.sical experiments; he hands down the names of these springs and their manifold healing virtues.
The Fountain of Saint Calogero, described as one of the most famous, was lukewarm, of ammoniacal and alkaline flavour; a gla.s.sful of it produced the most violent retchings and vomitings. Properly applied, however, the water had been found to relieve the gout, the discomforts of child-bearing, leprosy, irritation of the mucous membrane of the nose, impetigo, strabismus and ophthalmia. If the patient observed care in his diet, avoiding articles of calorific nature such as fried fish and boiled lentils, he would find himself greatly benefited by its use in the case of cornucopic hydrocephalus, flatulence, tympanitis and varicose veins. It was useful, furthermore, as a cure for the stings of scorpions and other venomous beasts.
The so-called ”Fountain of Paradise,” of nitrous ingredients, spurted forth with a prodigious hissing noise at a temperature of boiling lead, from so inaccessible a fissure in the rocks that little had been done to investigate its peculiar properties. It was held none the less to be efficacious for the distemper known as PLICA POLONICA, and the peasant folk, mixing its spray with the acorns on which their pigs were fattened, had observed that these quadrupeds prospered vastly in health and appearance.
The Fountain of Hercules, laxative and tartaric, had proved its efficacy in cases of enlarged spleen, hare-lip, vertigo, apoplexy, cachexia, cacodoria, cacochymia senilis and chilblains. It was also considered to be a sovereign remedy for that distressing and almost universal complaint, the piles.
The Fountain known as ”La Salina,” of a.r.s.enical nature, was frequented chiefly by women who found in its waters an alleviation for troubles which Monsignor Perrelli does not specify. It was recommended, moreover, as a sheep-dip.
The Fountain of the Virgin, purgative and blastopeptic, had given relief to sufferers from the quartan fever, herpes, elephantiasis, and to all persons of atrobiliary and lunatick temperament.
The so-called ”Old Fountain,” of sub-acidulate and vitriolique flavour, chalybeate and cataplastic, was renowned for removing stains from household linen. Taken in minute doses, under medical advice, it gave relief to patients afflicted with the wolfe, NOLI ME TANGERE, crudities, Bablyonian itch, globular pemphlegema, fantastical visions, koliks, asthma and affections of the heart. It also ”fortifies the stomach, comforts the bowels, reduces the gallstone to sand, the sand to mud, the mud to water--water which can be pa.s.sed out of the system by the usual channels.”
The Fountain of Saint Vulcan, anti-blepharous and amygdaloidal, was charged with such potent minerals that a single spoonful produced a diarrhoea more distressing to witness than cholera. None the less, applied externally, it was a wondrous remedy in cases of jaundice, toothache and open wounds.
The Fountain of the Capon, sedative and s...o...b..tic, was indicated for rheumatisms of every kind, not excluding sprained limbs, hydrophobia, lycanthropy, black choler, oppilations and procrastinating catapepsia.